Final Fantasy VII REMAKE Catch All

I really wonder about how I'll feel about the ending, when I get there. So far, to Chapter 12, the story appears to be the same story, but either fleshed out or padded, depending on your point of view. But there don't appear to be major changes, except one scene where it appeared Cloud was having a flashback to something that hasn't yet happened. I may be misreading that scene, though, or reading too much into it based on hearing people say that the ending threw them for a loop.

ccesarano wrote:

This is certainly not unique to him, but other anime and JRPG's have done it better and without being sequel bait. There's a lot of Japanese media where the biggest twists or reveals are saved until the end.

It's not unique to him, to anime, or to Japanese media. I never said it was. American television has been particularly enamored of it in the last decade or so, as one easy example; the goal seems to be to make the viewer yell "What?!" as the credits for the season finale roll. (A lot of the current obsession with spoilers comes from people wanting to preserve that moment of shock for themselves through whatever means necessary.)

It's a storytelling technique, no more or less. As such, there are some creators who use it deftly and others who don't seem to know when to use it and when to refrain. Or, if it's the technique they use, when to tip the whole apple cart and when to just give it a big shake.

Nomura seems to like to tip the whole apple cart, and he seems to like to do it every time. Like his tendency to faff around in the planning stages of a project, it's a well-known habit of his. Thinking ahead to the rest of the Final Fantasy VII remake series, if he remains in charge of the narrative, that's something that gives me a lot of pause. Beeporama had expressed confusion over the characters, their motivations, and the world they're in; I expect all of that to get worse in future installments, not better.

I was more trying to keep in with the style of its execution. I mean, we can go back to the cliffhanger of the first season of Twin Peaks, or Dallas and Who Shot Mr. Burns and all that stuff. But there's a particular... method of going about it that anime and JRPGs seem to do quite often.

I have no prediction of the future of the series myself, aside from the two co-directors being there at the very least to keep Nomura on track.

Back in, and up to Chapter 13. That fight at the end of Chapter 12 ... wasn't my favorite.

Spoiler:

Reno vs. Cloud in the church felt like sparring, but this one just felt like big flashing lights and explosions all over the place, especially once Rude joined in. I never really felt like I was planning for anything or countering anything, just hitting hard, buffing, and healing. At least I'm getting better at the combat system, and having Barret back -- with the Magnify / Barrier combo -- made the fight more manageable.

I also really, really dislike like the trope of "beat the crap out of the enemy to prevent catastrophe, but then in a scripted sequence one of the enemies gets back up, avoids all your (scripted) attacks, and nonetheless causes that catastrophe." What a way to undermine my feeling of agency and accomplishment. Why did we even have this fight, if that was the outcome?

That's every Turks fight in the original game. Except the last, which you can avoid outright if you completed Wutai.

It's a little different, I think. The Turks get away after every fight, but the game don't necessarily follow each Turks fight with a scripted sequence that undermines what you just thought you accomplished, and where your characters suddenly can't hit any of the Turks to save their lives.

As you defeat the Turks in combat they also kneel or lie down.

I really enjoyed that fight because Bio messes them up real bad.

Interesting note, Rude likes Tifa. In the original game, he will never hit her, even if she's the only one not KO'd. Kinda wish they transferred that mechanic over to the remake.

Grenn wrote:

Interesting note, Rude likes Tifa. In the original game, he will never hit her, even if she's the only one not KO'd. Kinda wish they transferred that mechanic over to the remake.

From the FFVII Remake wiki:

In the second fight he'll always avoid attacking Tifa directly, and will try to instead incapacitate her while doing minimal damage.

Just finished it. Hoo boy... gonna take a bit of time to digest it.

9.5/10 for me. It’s amazing how much they made me like the characters.

Aaaaaaaand done. Really liked it. Will go back to get hard mode.

Spoiler:

Are we gonna fight Sephiroth at the end of every game? Cuz that might get old.

I just got to the point in Chapter 14 where a bunch of side quests open up, and the game gives me a warning that if I want to complete them, I must do so before entering Shinra tower. So, when is the point of no return? If Shinra Tower is the last chapter, can I do these across the next few chapters, at my leisure?

LastSurprise wrote:

I just got to the point in Chapter 14 where a bunch of side quests open up, and the game gives me a warning that if I want to complete them, I must do so before entering Shinra tower. So, when is the point of no return? If Shinra Tower is the last chapter, can I do these across the next few chapters, at my leisure?

14 is not the last chapter, but every sidequest is chapter-specific. Once you move on, you won't get another chance to do it until you finish the game and unlock chapter select; in a way, you're constantly crossing points of no return. As you might have seen with chapter 3's sidequests, you might be able to return to an area... but life will have moved on.

If it had not been for that warning, which mentioned Shinra Tower, I would have figured the quests were chapter-specific. But, that warning seemed different -- especially because, while I know that Aerith is there (I've played the original a few times), the characters don't yet know where she is. So I figured that Chapter 14 would not end with me entering the tower (and I know there are 18 chapters, anyway). But these quests are chapter specific, too?

Also, I think I had seen some people comment here that you can do the Leviathan summon battle later than Chapter 14, and that it was too difficult for some in this chapter. How late can I do that one?

Unless I’m mistaken you need to finish it before you go, otherwise you have to wait til post-game chapter select. Not story spoilers but it’s to do with how the post-game works so tagging it anyway:

Spoiler:

Chapter 17 is the second to last. When you get to the postgame it tells you there’s a new Shinra Combat Simulator in Chapter 17. You can access the VR summon fights as well as new non-summon fights. But that specific console Isn’t available til postgame and the one in chapter 16 didn’t have the summons.

I beat Levi with a level 32 team at the end of chapter 14. Put elemental lightning on Barrett’s gun and control him primarily, equip someone (he doubled as my healer) with magnify healing and magic/healing buffs, and keep trucking. It’s a long fight but if you save an ATB for full party curaga after Tidal Waves it isn’t too bad. Also helps to block his other specials.

Possible correction based on what I've been told:

Spoiler:

Evidently, after you do the combat simulator once, Chadley shows up standing next to it. I didn't see him on my playthrough so I didn't get to fight Leviathan before leaving that area, but you evidently do have a chance to get Leviathan while in the Shinra building.

That is correct. I can confirm that’s what happened in my play through.

Argh. Why is is that there is no load time to get into the pull-ups challenge, but if I mess up and quit, I have to suffer through about 30 seconds of load time to talk to Jules again?! I swear, this is more frustrating than the challenge itself.

LastSurprise wrote:

I think I had seen some people comment here that you can do the Leviathan summon battle later than Chapter 14, and that it was too difficult for some in this chapter. How late can I do that one?

Spoiler:

As mentioned, you can do that in chapter 16 with Cloud, Barrett, and Tifa.

Confession: I dropped the difficulty to "Easy" just so I could get it out of the way earlier.

Whatever you choose, if it gives you any perspective, the Leviathan summon is not game-changingly powerful. I don't know what the subtle differences are, but it doesn't seem to offer much over Fat Chocobo. Other than being cool. (Especially if summoned outdoors where you can see it flying around.)

For me enemies frequently ran out of the way when I used Fat Chocobo’s specials. There is generally not anywhere to run from Briny Blast, same as in the battle against him.

But yeah I would not say Levi pushes a battle one way or the other compared to other summons.

LastSurprise wrote:

Argh. Why is is that there is no load time to get into the pull-ups challenge, but if I mess up and quit, I have to suffer through about 30 seconds of load time to talk to Jules again?! I swear, this is more frustrating than the challenge itself.

I'm biased and have no proof of this, but ever since Unreal Engine 3 became the big engine of choice to use I've noticed more and more games being real bad with reloading content after death. Granted, I always point to the Halo games, where in 2001 Bungie had Halo: Combat Evolved having pretty much no loading time after death. It was like Super Meat Boy, where you die and are dropped right back to the previous checkpoint. Then Unreal Engine comes around and gets licensed to everyone and it's loading screens everywhere.

Which is unfair, because there are plenty of games that still have loading screens after death and aren't like that. The problem is that these engines probably have a general task that wipes memory and reloads a whole bunch of data back a certain point, and that is the command that FF7R is running every time you quit out of the pull-ups. If you complete the pull-ups, it doesn't run any such command, and thus it may actually take less time to just complete the challenge even if you know you'll lose (or at least it feels like less time). So not only does that game really need a "retry", but it needs to be more careful in what it resets rather than shoving everything off of the desk and then picking it back up off the floor, placing it back where it was originally.

And that's my conjecture into how I imagine these games work based purely on reading something long ago on how Bungie made use of the Xbox's hard drive to eliminate loading screens as much as possible.

Is there anything you won't blame Unreal Engine for?

The engine is the tool with which you build the game, UE just gives developers loads and loads of ways to make their game. HOW they utilize the tool is entirely up to them. You want to talk about load times? Look at Hard drive RPM, CPU Speed, and Ram Storage + RAM speed. THOSE are what determine your load screen. I load Gears 5 on PC fairly quickly but I have a big fancy top of the line machine. On XB1, however, it loads slower because that is fairly outdated tech.

Developers can do things to improve on this. Look at Horizon Zero Dawn, it got around certain tech limitation by making it so you load only what your cone of vision sees and selectively populated and loads items as you look around. If FF7R is reloading a bunch of stuff to get back into a section it's because THEY programmed it poorly, not because of some evil industry-wide engine.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

:lol: Is there anything you won't blame Unreal Engine for?

Look. Everyone needs a scapegoat. The Democrats have Trump, the Republicans have Obama, and I have Unreal Engine.

b12n11w00t wrote:

The engine is the tool with which you build the game, UE just gives developers loads and loads of ways to make their game. HOW they utilize the tool is entirely up to them. You want to talk about load times? Look at Hard drive RPM, CPU Speed, and Ram Storage + RAM speed. THOSE are what determine your load screen. I load Gears 5 on PC fairly quickly but I have a big fancy top of the line machine. On XB1, however, it loads slower because that is fairly outdated tech.

Developers can do things to improve on this. Look at Horizon Zero Dawn, it got around certain tech limitation by making it so you load only what your cone of vision sees and selectively populated and loads items as you look around. If FF7R is reloading a bunch of stuff to get back into a section it's because THEY programmed it poorly, not because of some evil industry-wide engine.

That's trick of Horizon's is both old and pretty common. It's also probably more accurate to say it renders what your cone of vision sees rather than loads, though I'd have to dig into dev blogs or diaries or something to get the specifics. It's sort of like Unreal Engine having a greater draw distance by modifying the textures of distant objects to be lower resolution than having everything be high resolution all the time (which, coincidentally, is in part where texture pop-in comes from, in addition to the cone of vision you mentioned with Horizon).

The hardware items you mention can certainly speed things up, but there are other tricks and techniques that can be used that I'm certain a lot of devs don't bother with because it requires far more specific or nitty-gritty code work. Engines and languages have been less and less about communicating directly with the hardware over time, and as a result you probably have whole hordes of programmers that don't even know how to do it.

However, if you really want to poke a hole in my argument, it's that Halo: Combat Evolved was built on specific hardware with very precise specifications. If your game is built for a broad assortment of hardware, even if that assortment is just "PC", you can't rely on working in that deep of a level to get the same result. To that end, a game that simply wipes everything off the table and sets it back where it was really is the simplest, most broad solution, even if it's not the best solution.

It's also just my guesswork as to how things operate. People don't often talk about the secret of loading screens because it's not good marketing. Maybe there's a GDC talk I can find somewhere that'll go into it. Needless to say, if the only way to reduce load times was better hardware then we wouldn't have examples of games where that's demonstrably untrue.

That arena fight went from 1 to 100 real fast. Is Cloud a real estate broker now?

I am on chapter 13 and rather then focusing on the "faults" of the game, I am finding it very enjoyable and Glad it was finally made.

Stealthpizza wrote:

That arena fight went from 1 to 100 real fast. Is Cloud a real estate broker now?

Ha! That's a good one!

About to finish with Chapter 17, and ...

Spoiler:

The Drum got on my nerves a bit. I hadn't much minded the padding in this game, as it mostly worked well to flesh out the story and the world. But feeling the pace of the plot pick up, and build to the climax -- plus "knowing" that I should be pressing on to Pres. Shinra's suite -- that extra dungeon just felt so unnecessary.

But on the other hand, I LOVED the creepy remix of the Jenovah theme. It was pitch-perfect for this chapter.

Aaand done! I feel like there's a lot about the ending that I want to talk about, but I'll need to let my mind digest it over a few days, first.

I'm really glad I played this, and glad that I played it while it was new and fresh. Although I don't have FF VII nostalgia like other people -- it wasn't my first FF, I didn't own a Playstation, and I played it several years after release -- it was a joy to revisit Midgar and see some of these characters re-imagined. And the music. Man, they really nailed the score. I was geeking out from the first note of the bombing mission, each time Those Who Fight Further was remixed (it's one of my favorites), through meeting Aerith, the multiple different versions of the Jenovah theme, and the final confrontation.

A few overall thoughts on the game:

The level design and storytelling style remind me a lot of Final Fantasy XIII. The levels here are just as linear as they were there. But FF VII Remake clicked for me in a way that XIII didn't. I think there were several factors behind this: more direct control over the combat; a skill-tree system that at least provides an illusion of choice, in the way the Crystarium did not; enough time with the same party members to grow attached to them (and no one who bothered me like Snow!); and a story that felt more approachable from the jump. I'm sure my familiarity with the characters helped.

At first, I thought the game felt like FF XIII and Kingdom Hearts had a baby. I saw KH's influence in the combat system, but it definitely seems present in the storytelling, too, as you go on.

At the same time, although the game levels were all very linear, this game also sometimes felt like a proof-of-concept for a game with a broader world and more intricate dungeons. I especially felt that way in the dungeons that featured a party member's abilities to interact with the environment. I liked them, but as executed I didn't feel like they added anything. But if you could switch lead characters, and needed several abilities to overcome environmental puzzles ...

LastSurprise wrote:

The level design and storytelling style remind me a lot of Final Fantasy XIII. The levels here are just as linear as they were there.

Glad you enjoyed it! I just so happen to have jumped directly from VIIR to XIII and I disagree about the level design.

VIIR has levels with some degree of interactivity pretty much from the second major area. You have to turn on lights and move platforms in the rafters to get to reactor 5. You have to move the trains around and such in the graveyard, and move platforms before the Ghast fight. Annoying as they were you had to maneuver those hands around in the collapsed highway. Even without taking the three “odd-job” chapters into account, VIIR is a lot more pliant. They’re both linear in the sense that you enter each area from one set point and exit it from another, but the amount of things to do in those areas between entrance and exit is a lot more in VIIR. It’s linear compared to XV, XII... but nowhere near as on-rails as XIII. I like XIII well enough but as far as I’ve seen the only interactions you have with the world are:

1. Engage in combat
2. Engage with store/save module
4. Open treasure module
3. Trigger cutscene

The SOLE exception that comes to mind is I believe in chapter 5 where you turn it from rainy to sunny to encounter different enemies.